09/04/2026
😭 A Texas mom fighting terminal cancer has started recording videos for her four children for a reason that is almost unbearable.
She wants them to remember her voice.
Her face.
Who their mom was.
Samantha Hernandez lives in Magnolia, Texas, and has been fighting stage 4 peripheral T-cell lymphoma for nearly two years.
But recently, Sammie started doing something she had promised herself she wouldn’t do during her cancer fight.
She started making TikToks.
She calls the account “Love Letters From Sammie.”
And when you understand why, these videos hit completely differently.
“To my babies…”
That is how one begins.
Sammie looks into the camera and names them:
Claire. Ben. Asher. Delilah.
Then she explains why she’s recording.
“I want Ben to have videos of me so he can like really see me and really remember me.”
“I want y’all to have my voice that y’all can hear if anything happens.”
Read that again.
This is a mother thinking about a future in which one of her children may be too young to remember what she sounded like.
And yet, even while saying it, Sammie refuses to surrender.
“We’re still in the fight, we’re still in the fight, we’re not giving up.”
But then comes the sentence that exposes the fear underneath all of it:
“I’m scared, we’re running out of time.”
Sammie was 35 and her youngest was only five months old when she was diagnosed.
During her first round of chemotherapy, she suffered a massive hemorrhagic stroke and nearly died.
She survived that, relearned abilities the stroke had taken from her and continued fighting the cancer.
She eventually got encouraging enough results to begin preparing for a stem cell transplant.
Then the lymphoma returned.
Now, after more treatments and clinical trial medications, Sammie says another enormous obstacle stands between her and continuing that fight.
She says her insurance was canceled, she has been denied other coverage and Medicare won’t begin for another five months.
Sammie says doctors have told her untreated cancer could take her life much sooner than that.
So while she fights for access to treatment, she’s also doing something no 37-year-old mother should have to contemplate:
Making sure her children have pieces of their mom if she isn’t here someday to tell them these stories herself.
And these aren’t polished farewell videos.
That’s what makes them so powerful.
She talks about family.
She jokes about her brother getting old.
She tells her kids about the music she loved growing up.
She laughs.
She remembers.
She’s leaving behind the ordinary pieces of herself that children can spend a lifetime wishing they could hear just one more time.
Because Sammie doesn’t want to become only a photograph to her youngest.
She wants him to know her voice.
Her personality.
Her laugh.
His mom.
And despite everything she’s facing, her goal for the future isn’t some enormous milestone.
“I want to be here long enough to see my two year old graduate kindergarten!”
Kindergarten.
That is the finish line this mother is begging for right now.
Jenn, another woman touched personally by this same disease, reached out to me hoping more people would see Sammie’s fight.
I’m glad she did.
Because somewhere tonight, most of us will hear our kids call “Mom” or “Dad” without giving it a second thought.
Sammie is fighting for more days when her children can still call for her—and hear their mom answer back.
So I want to turn the comments over to her.
If Samantha is reading today, what would you tell this mom about the memories she’s making RIGHT NOW—and what would you tell her to help her keep fighting for that kindergarten graduation and beyond?
